Chosen Solution
Followed the guide successfully in replacing the hard drive with a new one purchased from the list provided. Was able to successfully install Snow Leopard from DVD, completed 2 SW updates, and restored data and apps from Time Machine. I then downloaded Lion (trying to get back to Yosemite incrementally); on reboot the install progress screen appears briefly then goes to Disk Utility. Permission Verify runs and lists many issues, but Repair Permissions is grayed out. Info on the HD shows it is writable, but the partition I created is not. I believe I formatted the HD with journalling, but that option is grayed out as well. Booted from the DVD, repaired permissions on the HD partition and verified the disk is writable, but after normal boot things are as before. Looking for some ideas… The IMac is a 27" EMC 2309 and the HD was on the recommended list for that unit. Update (09/06/2017) No other Mac available. I erased the partition and am currently installing Snow Leopard. Once that’s completed I’ll go to the App Store to download and attempt to install Yosemite. If that doesn’t work then I’ll try the thumb drive approach. I also have an external drive – perhaps I could create a partition there to create the installer?
Let see if we can just jump to Yosemite directly. First do you have access to the Yosemite OS installer app? You can still get it from the App Store if you downloaded it before. Go to the Purchased tab and look for it there. Otherwise you’ll need to find a friend with a copy. This is assuming you have a second Mac or access to one, otherwise you’ll need to either connect your old drive externally via USB or better yet FireWire or put the drive back in so we can setup the needed OS installer. OK, we got the Apple OS installer for Yosemite. Well also need a clean USB thumb drive to make it into an OS installer following this guide: How to make a bootable OS X 10.10 Yosemite install drive. At this point you’ve created the needed installer, but before we can install it we need to back wind the systems clock! Apple has a windowed certificate that limits when it can be used (about 2 years) to force people on upgrading. Which we don’t want to do here due to the systems age. Go to the date & Time settings alter the settings from the time server to manual time and ten set the date to 2014. Now restart your system and hold the option key to get to the startup manager and select the USB installer and let it rip! Follow the instructions and apply all of the updates before restoring your data. But before we do this let’s make sure you have the correct drive for your system and you might want to see if the systems firmware is upto date as well.
